1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to means for protecting and/or decorating apertures in walls, such as windows or the like. This invention is directed more particularly to a device applicable notably to private houses or commercial or industrial buildings, for protecting the premises against the effects of light, and also against insects, or simply for protecting the private life of the occupants. It is also applicable to the manufacture of blinds, slatted blinds, roller-blinds or the like.
2. THE PRIOR ART
As a rule, for protecting apertues inwalls, such as windows or the like, against the effects of light and also against insects, or still for protecting the privacy of the occupants, or even simply for reasons of aesthetics, it is current practice to use all types of blinds, mainly retractable ones, as well as shutters, roller-blinds, hangings or the like, so that the apertures can be cleared when desired or neceessary.
In the particular field of protection against the detrimental effects of daylight, it is current practice to use roll-up devices such as slatted blinds, awning blinds, or blinds provided with a flexible protection screen advantageously of the accordion fold-up type. It may also be pointed out that the same types of devices are used for protecting the intimacy of the occupants.
On the other hand, as far as the protection against insects is concerned, use is made of rigid retractable screens, the socalled mosquito-curtains or nets, consisting of a rigid frame of a size consistent with the dimensions of the aperture to be protected, a flexible cellular material being stretched in this frame and permitting the diffusion of light while preventing the ingress of insects.
Finally, decorative devices are also known to which purely aesthetical functions are devolved. For example, these decorative devices may consist of blinds and/or hangings suspended at their top edges from small trolleys running or sliding in guide rails disposed horizontally above the aperture to be protected. However, in certain cases protection devices similar to those mentioned hereinabove are also used for decorative instead of functional purposes.
When the user wishes to combine several functions, the protection against the detrimental action of light, the protection against insects, the protection of the occupants' intimacy, or simply the decorative or aesthetical function, several devices each suitable for performing a specific function, are currently available, these devices being disposed by turns or simultaneously in parallel relationship in front of the aperture to be protected or decorated, or both.
Though these known devices are relatively satisfactory on the whole, they require the use of two separate devices, thus increasing unduly on the one hand the space occupied and on the other hand, indirectly, the final cost of the protection and/or decorative device.
In certain cases, these "parallel" devices cannot be installed because their overall dimensions are excessive or the assembly is unaesthetic. Moreover, in some constructions such as a transportable house, a mobile home, a caravan, a boat, or the like, in addition to the space occupied the ocst factor should not be disregarded.